A multi-tasker needs all the RAM his PC will handle. I just increased mine to 2GB and I can tell a big difference. On the other hand, 512 is a pretty healthy amount of internal memory for a notebook – especially if you have a PIV processor. If you have a Celeron, however, it needs a lot of help. I’ve resorted to formatting, again a few times – but it was always with Celerons and the computers were slow from the second you turned them on.
I would first try dumping all of your background programs. You can do this by running “msconfig” to select “Selective Startup”, go to the Startup tab and unchecking everything but your antivirus program. Other software maintenance issue (besides defrag) is keeping all your junk files cleaned (trash, temp files, temp internet files, cache, history, etc.). I like a little program called “Window Washer ‘but there are several on the market, another problem you may be the heat. If the underside of your notebook is not properly ventilated could be running hot – and that really will delay.
Multi-tasking is a memory thirsty pastime. Your CPU can clearly cope. Adding 256 MB of RAM would make a difference, 512MB would be a far greater impact, however. Not again mate, you’ll be gutted afterwards, as you can never quite the same things again.First I will list below, one way you are able to greatly improve things by simply tweaking windows a bit.
You may or may not be familiar with virtual memory. (If you are, prepare to suck eggs, sorry) It is an area of Hard Drive specifically allocated by Windows to act as an overflow for when your system runs low on physical RAM. So if your system has 512 MB and your multi-tasking requires 1024MB, Windows will use 512MB of Virtual RAM to make the extra.
When you defragment your hard disk, virtual memory is shown as Data that can not be moved (Green). The problem is that Windows manages virtual memory dynamically. Setting a minimum and a maximum value that changes as and when required. This tends to slow things like the Virtual Memory allocation becomes fragmented on your hard disk. In turn this delays your Processor as it retrieves data from all over the place instead of just on your memory module (s).
The best way to overcome this is to check the Task Manager while multi-tasking. And while the PC is at rest. You must use the “Page File” usage (which is another name for virtual memory) note. See how high it goes when you are hammering, and how low it goes when it rests. Subtract max min and add around 10%. This figure is taken up later. Your goal is to end up with a page file in a place with no fragments. All you’re doing is optimizing your system.
Start by, defragmenting your hard disk. Now left click Start, My Computer, right click, left click on Properties. Now you need to open the System Properties window. Click the Advanced tab, Performance Settings, Advanced. In the Virtual memory click Change. Select Custom Size and place your calculated figure (Max-Min) +10%.
You must use the same figure for both Max and Min. This will fix the memory and stop windows from expanding and shrinking it dynamically. You’ll likely need to restart before the changes take effect. Once started, you can go to Defragmenter and the drive to ensure that you have just a fragment of Pagefile analysis. This information can be viewed in the report generated by Defragmenter. If the Page File is fragmented, try defragging it again to try and clear a contiguous area big enough.
